During the past decade, there has been an increasing focus on crisis intervention as a therapeutic and preventive technique. As a result, the purpose of the present investigation is to assess the efficacy of crisis intervention for the prevention of psychiatric illness, medical illness, and disturbed social functioning following a severe crisis. Unexpected death was chosen as a representative family crisis in order to test the following hypotheses: (1) A major life crisis increases the risk that the participants will develop psychiatric illness, medical illness, and disturbed social functioning; (2) therapeutic intervention at the time of crisis increases the effectiveness of ongoing crisis coping behavior of family members, which will (3) decrease the risk of their developing subsequent psychiatric illness, medical illness, and disturbed social functioning. Families of individuals who died unexpectedly were identified through an agreement with the coroner of Denver County. Those families who participated were randomly assigned to a crisis intervention experimental or a no intervention control group. An additional matched group of families who experienced no recent death or separation served as a no crisis control group. All families in each of the three groups are being evaluated at six and eighteen months on: (a) psychiatric illness, (b) medical illness, (c) crisis coping behavior, (d) family functioning, and (e) social cost measures. The primary objective of this renewal proposal is to complete parametric and nonparametric analysis of all data collected and to report and publish the findings in a scientifically meaningful manner.